Aimé was seven years old, and for the first time ever, he had woken up in a country that wasn’t Ireland.

It was a sunny day, the air dry and warm, and as the boy’s feet, clad in new trainers, thudded against the reddened earth made dry and hot by the sun, it crunched and shifted in satisfying ways. There was a sort of baked dirt smell on the air – there was no clay in it (he knew what earth smelled like when there was more clay mixed in from visiting Mémé’s sister further east before they’d come here), and the air didn’t smell quite as sticky, smelt fresher, but there was more acidity in the air, too.

It was a little past seven o’clock, and his mother was still asleep, but even though the shutters were closed over the windows, bright light from the shining sun filtered in through the gaps at the top and the bottom, and he was bored of lying in bed.

He was walking from the little guesthouse, which they normally used to store stuff, and out to Mémé’s house, which was much bigger.

He’d never been on an aeroplane before that he remembered – his mother said that he’d been to France before and that they’d come on the ferry and landed in Calais, but he couldn’t remember that, because he’d only been a baby.

He knew Mémé’s voice better than her face, and he still wasn’t used to her face. His mother had photos of her in the house, but they were high up on the wall and he’d never looked at them very closely: Mémé to meet was taller than his mother, and she had strong shoulders and strong arms and skin that looked like tanned leather and age spots on her hands and her wrinkled neck and her cheeks, and when she hugged Aimé she hugged him so tightly he thought his bones would crack, and she kissed his cheeks, and she smelled of dry leaves and dirt and wine.

“You understand French, boy?” asked Aunt Margot, who was the wife of Uncle Guy, who was his mother’s brother.

“Yeah,” Aimé said. “My mother says it’s important I speak French, and my father.”

Margot clucked her tongue, shaking her head and laughing, and she nudged her two sons, Joseph and Florent, who were bigger boys than Aimé, twelve and fourteen, and they were tall and Florent was starting to grow hair on his face, and Joseph had braces.

“Listen to him,” said Margot, shaking her head at him, but she was smiling. “Such a Paris accent! We shall fix that. You want breakfast?”

Aimé nodded his head, and he climbed up to sit at the table with the other boys and Margot, grinning when she set a plate in front of him. No one hovered over him or made him hold his knife and fork differently or say he was eating too fast or too slowly – they just let him eat, and although they all talked very fast, faster than he was used to, he found he could understand most of it.

“Ah, my special boy!” said Mémé as she came into the room, and when she leaned in, the buried her face in Aimé’s hair and kissed the top of his head, and patted his cheek. Her hands smelt of dirt, and when Aimé looked at them, her fingernails were dirty with the red earth. “You sleep well?”

“Yeah,” Aimé said.

“Good, good,” said Mémé.

They were here for two weeks, because his mother hated all the sound it was making as the builders added on their new conservatory, and she’d said to his father that her mother was “taking advantage of the opportunity”, and Aimé didn’t know exactly what that meant, but he did know it meant his Mémé wanted to see him, and he liked that.

Whenever they talked on the phone, she seemed like a nice old woman – she wished him happy birthday and merry Christmas and asked if he had liked what she had sent him for both, and he usually did, because Mémé sent him clothes that were warm and didn’t scratch and even though his mother told his nanny that they were ugly, because his grandmother had sent them she had to let him wear them, and she always sent him new pencils and paper and paint and she sent him books that were interesting that were always in French.

“You’re up earlier than Marguerite,” said Mémé.

“Not Marguerite any longer, Maman. My name is Margaret,” said Aimé’s mother coldly from the doorway, and Aimé quickly wiped off his hands and got up from the dinner table, but Mémé grabbed him by the back of his shirt before he could get away, and he looked up at her.

“Plate in the sink, Aimé,” was all she said, though, and after he dropped his bowl into the sink, Margot patted the top of his head, and they let him run outside after the other boys.

*     *     *

Aimé was fourteen years old, and he couldn’t sleep.

Sighing, he dragged himself out of bed and sprayed some mosquito spray on his arms, and rubbed it in absently as he padded out of the room, still undressed, and walked outside.

The lantern was still lit on Mémé’s porch, and wearing only his sandals, having tugged a robe on over his boxers and his t-shirt, he padded across the earth in the yard, to where Mémé was sitting back in her rocking chair.

“You look like an old man,” said Mémé. “Walking in your dressing gown and your sandals, all tired.”

“You look like an old woman,” Aimé replied. “What kind of woman actually has a rocking chair on her porch? You from a cartoon?”

Mémé laughed – it was a good laugh, hoarse and creaking and leathery, a laugh that matched how she looked, and she leaned over to pat the deckchair beside her, which Aimé came toward, and sank down into. Mémé had never remarried, after she and Aimé’s granddad had got divorced – his grandfather always said she was a hard woman, unyielding, but every summer when he visited, usually with his mother, although there’d been one great summer a few years ago where she’d dropped him off before going north to visit friends in Paris, she didn’t strike him as hard at all.

She was a nasty woman, that much was true, with a sharp streak of humour like a razorblade, but not hard. Not that he thought, anyway.

“How is school?” Mémé asked.

“It’s shit,” Aimé said.

“Your grades are good.”

“I didn’t say it was hard. I said it was shit.”

“Old man,” Mémé said wisely. “Will you be the same at thirty-one as you are at thirteen?”

“I hope I’ll be taller,” said Aimé, and Mémé laughed her creaking laugh, rocking pensively in her chair. It was past two, and she looked tired, bags under her eyes, but she didn’t look like she’d be going to bed soon. “You hate my mother?”

“Sometimes,” Mémé said. “Not always. Not like she hates me.”

“She doesn’t hate you,” Aimé said. “She hates where she came from.”

Mémé looked at him very seriously. “I am where she came from.”

Aimé considered this, and then, unable to argue anymore, he nodded his head.

“Do you hate her?” Mémé asked.

“Sometimes,” Aimé said. “Not like she hates you.”

“A boy shouldn’t hate his mother,” Mémé said. “Shouldn’t hate school, either.”

“Anything else I shouldn’t do?”

“You shouldn’t smoke,” Mémé said.

“I don’t!”

“Don’t lie to your grandmother,” Mémé said, and clapped him upside the head. “Florent doesn’t keep track of his cigarettes, but I do. Buy your own.”

“I’m fourteen, they won’t sell them to me.”

“Learn to steal them from someone else, then, or stop smoking,” said Mémé, and Aimé laughed, laughed in a way he found he hadn’t in a little while, and he wondered if he’d feel less tired at thirty-one than he did now. “You look sad,” Mémé said. “This is why I say you are like an old man. You are sad like one. They bully you at school?”

“Why, ‘cause I’m ugly?”

“You’re not ugly.”

“Sure, I am,” Aimé said. “I went into a new class this year, and this boy from Clare came up to me, a new boy, and said, are you the French boy? You’re ugly. And I said, okay. And he said, well, aren’t you going to argue with me? And I said, no, I know I’m ugly. Do you know you’re a cunt?”

Mémé considered this, rocking pensively for a few moments, so that Aimé could hear the regular sound of the polished wood rockers on the wooden floor underneath.

“What did he say to that?” she asked finally.

“He actually teared up, like he was going to cry,” Aimé said. “It was unexpected – a little sad. His parents are divorcing – that’s why he moved schools. His mum sent him to ours to show off to his dad, I think, show she could afford a private school. I punched him in the face before anyone else noticed.”

“That was good of you,” said Mémé. “You two are friends now?”

“He tried to be,” Aimé said. “Tried to come up after my suspension was over, thank me for saving face. I told him to fuck off.”

“Why?” Mémé asked. “It’s not like you have many boys lining up to be your friend.”

“He’s a faggot,” Aimé said.

“So? Your Uncle Clément lives with his boyfriend in Montpelier. Would you punch him in the face?”

“I didn’t punch him because he’s a homo,” Aimé muttered. “Just didn’t want to hang out with him.”

“Maybe that’s why school is so shit for you.”

“Maybe,” Aimé muttered.

“You’re nothing like your mother was at your age, you know,” said Mémé. “She wanted to spread her wings and take to the sky – you want to burrow in the earth like a cockroach.”

“This earth I’d burrow in,” Aimé said. “It’s good earth.”

“You’re right,” Mémé said, and then she’d patted the back of his hand. It was a little touch, the sort she didn’t too often, but he liked it, when she did. “I wish you could be here more often.”

“So do I,” Aimé said, and Mémé picked up the bottle of wine from the table, pouring herself another glass, and without asking, she picked up another glass, pouring a little for Aimé, too.

“You drink wine at home?” Mémé said.

“Vodka, mostly.”

“Vodka,” Mémé said, clucking her tongue disapprovingly. “There is no soul in vodka.” She pushed the glass toward him, and he brought it up to his lips, inhaled before he tasted it. It was a young wine, fruity but without much depth, and a little too acidic – it made him wrinkle his nose.

It wasn’t vinegary, just sharp, a little strong.

“Not great, is it?”

“No,” Aimé said, smacking his lips together and trying to get the taste out of his mouth. “Is it ours?”

“Fuck no,” Mémé said. “Trottier made this – you know, from across town? Their girl is that awful creature with the brown hair, always throws stones at Margot’s cat.”

“I hate the Trottiers,” Aimé said.

Mémé laughed. “Me too,” she said, and they clinked their glasses together.

*     *     *

Aimé was nineteen, and his grandmother was dead.

He’d walked upriver from the campus, his rucksack on his back, and now he sat on one of the banks of the Lyreen, drinking wine straight from the bottle. Mémé had sent twelve bottles home with him when he’d come back to Ireland, and he’d been saving them for a special occasion – in a week, he’d drunk five, and in his hand was the sixth.

His head hurt, and his face felt numb even though he wasn’t drunk yet: his chest ached. His father had come by to tell him the news personally, and Aimé hadn’t realised he’d taken Aimé’s passport with him, to insure that Aimé couldn’t back out of his promise not to go to the funeral, and to stay at school.

He’d be damned if he’d be going to his fucking lectures, though.

It was late March, and the air was cool and damp, settling on his skin and making him shiver.

A guard had been by, had shone a torch down at him even though it was six and not yet dark, and when Aimé had asked, dryly, “My dad send you?”, he’d blustered and kept walking, which meant that yes, he had.

He didn’t drown himself in the river, though.

Not his style of suicide.

*     *     *

AIMÉ

He had a habit of hiding his passport, these days.

Ever since his father had pulled that trick after his grandmother had died, he’d taken to making sure his passport was hidden so that no one could steal it off him, but his father had never tried it a second time – and by the time Margot and Joseph and Florent had died (his uncle had already died of an aneurysm in the early noughties), he’d been so ashamed of not being able to go to his Mémé’s he hadn’t even tried to fly out for it.

The rumble of the plane’s engine was a pleasant rumble underneath him, and he closed his eyes as he felt the plane finally start to lift off the ground, his stomach feeling like it was being flipped inside his torso, that’s strange sensation of upward motion.

When he was a teenager – once he’d been about fourteen or so – he used to imagine, vividly, all the ways he could die in a plane crash: if the cabin depressurised and his neck got snapped as he was sucked out of a crack in the plane door; if a bird strike led to a sudden engine failure and the whole plane plunged into the ocean; if one of the pilots and he had a shared proclivity for wanting to fucking die, and flew them nose first into a goddamn building.

None of that had ever happened, of course.

He couldn’t remember what he’d thought about on plane journeys when he was a little kid – maybe just that he was excited to see his grandmother, or dreading seeing his father, depending on which way he was going. He didn’t think he’d ever just sat like this, and looked at the other people.

Beside him, to his left, were a trio of older women, all three of them plump and wearing pearls – they were from Marseille, and once they got home to the city, the first thing they were going to do was take a spa break together. When they’d gotten onto the plane, one of them had been on the right hand of the aisle, where Aimé was sitting now, and Aimé had swapped places with the one with the red hair so that she could take the window seat, and all three of them could sit together.

He didn’t think it would ever have occurred to him to do that before.

He probably wouldn’t even have noticed that the three women seemed to know each other.

To his right, there was a woman travelling with her little girl: the girl had was half-asleep, and her mother had bundled up a jacket on the armrest between their seats, so that she could rest her head on her mother’s side, and the girl was asleep almost before they had taken off.

He wondered what Colm would feel like, sitting on a plane like this. Colm hated flying – he’d told Aimé as much, that he hated the sensation of flying, hated the cabin pressurising, the way it made his ears pop as they gained altitude, but he said it wasn’t as bad as flying with a winged angel. Colm didn’t like heights, but that wasn’t really what he was thinking about – it was more wondering what Colm must feel, packed into a flight, feeling people excited about their holiday or stressed about their business, all those people packed together in tin pipe, thousands of feet above anybody else.

“Something to drink?” asked the steward. He was a little man, probably the same height as Colm, but he was slim and pretty, had dark hair combed back from his face, a few of the curls falling prettily over his forehead.

“A glass of red,” Aimé said. “Please.”

He pulled his card out of his wallet, and the steward bit the inside of his lip, and said softly, “Um, sir, I’m really sorry, our card machine isn’t working—”

“Don’t worry about it,” Aimé said, and tugged a note out of his wallet instead.

“Sorry,” the man murmured again – he had a sweet voice, spoke shyly, and when he asked what red Aimé would prefer, and Aimé told him it didn’t matter, that even a sommelier had no palate at thirty thousand feet, his cheeks went pink, and he laughed, and he looked demurely down at his polished shoes.

He came back around once, after they’d put the drinks trolley down, ostensibly to check on the cabin just above his head, and sitting as he was in the aisle seat, Aimé had a great view of the way his waistcoat rode up his hips, the way it pulled up his shirt, too, and let him see a tiny hint of creamy skin.

“How many more times you have to go between Dublin and Grenoble tonight?” Aimé asked, holding his stupid plastic glass against his knee.

“This is my last flight,” said the steward, and then he pulled his waistcoat down, giving a little shift of his hips. “You staying long in Grenoble?”

“I don’t know,” Aimé said. “Gonna just walk out of the airport and find a hotel room.”

The steward smiled at him – he smiled sweetly, prettily. “Yeah?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Aimé said.

“We’re staying at La Ferme,” said the steward. “Maybe you will, too.”

“Maybe I will,” Aimé murmured.

“Are you—”

Someone further up the cabin had pressed their call button, and he could see the cute, pinched little face the steward pulled, the way he glanced away, and Aimé said, “Go ahead. I’m not going anywhere, sweetheart.”

That sweet little flush came onto his face again, burning in his cheeks, and he gave Aimé a smile before he walked up the cabin, and Aimé watched his arse as he walked away, squeezed into tight trousers, and his waistcoat was cinched tight, so that it was ruched up and let people see what was underneath. Aimé expected that was on purpose – but even with male stewards, Aimé supposed they wanted to look pretty.

It was nice, to have a pretty guy like that talk to him, flirt with him, laugh at his jokes.

He wasn’t like Jean-Pierre. Even when they’d met, Jean-Pierre had led Aimé where he wanted him to go, and Aimé had gone along with it – this guy was shy, let Aimé take the lead. Maybe he was insecure about something, had low self-esteem, or something like that.

Maybe he just liked ugly guys.

Aimé thought about it. He really, really did. He wondered what the steward would be like in bed, if he’d be as quiet and shy was he was now, or if he’d be loud and demanding; he wondered how he’d like it, face to face or from behind; he wondered where the most sensitive parts of his skin were, which would make him really writhe.

He avoided La Ferme, when the plane landed.

He got a taxi into Grenoble proper, carried his suitcase alongside him, and walked into a rundown little wine bar, the first one he saw that was licensed to open ‘til dawn, and stepped inside, past a group of old men chattering over a plate of cheese, past a couple on a date, and sank into a little table for two.

“Wine list,” said the waitress, who was chewing gum and stared somewhere into the middle distance rather than at Aimé’s face, setting it and the menu down on the table in front of him, next to a carafe and the glass. “Menu. Water, glass. You need another?”

“No, thanks,” Aimé said. “Leave me a few minutes, would you?”

“Got it,” she said, unfeeling, and stepped away.

He loved French customer service.

He took a few minutes, shifting in his seat: he dragged the strap of his satchel over his shoulder, sitting it down neatly on top of his suitcase, and then he rolled his shoulders, leaning back in his seat a second.

He thought of the steward with the fat arse, flirting with the ugly passenger on his flight, and he smiled to himself, pouring himself a glass from the jug and taking a sip, drumming his fingers on the table.

He felt strangely, inordinately calm.

He had been since he left.

He didn’t know what was wrong with him, really – he supposed he should be freaking out, screaming, whatever else. He wondered if that was what Jean-Pierre would be doing, once he woke up – was he awake already? It was impossible to say.

It wasn’t as though Jean-Pierre could call him. His father couldn’t call him, either – Aimé was completely free, no strings attached, had enough money to put himself down for a few weeks, get his head in order.

And then…

And then what?

He thought about Jean-Pierre killing him. He thought about Jean-Pierre getting carried away, sitting in Aimé’s lap with his hands around Aimé’s throat, or Jean-Pierre smoothly sliding a straight razor over his skin; he thought about Jean-Pierre suddenly losing his temper and snapping Aimé’s neck. It was hot, still, even though he didn’t want to fucking die that way, but maybe that was the problem, that it was hot.

And where was the guarantee, with Jean-Pierre, that he wouldn’t kill Aimé?

He’d killed King Rupert without meaning to, he’d said – hadn’t even thought about it, had just blanked out and done it, as if that was supposed to be fucking comforting, as if it’d be okay for Jean-Pierre to kill Aimé, so long as he didn’t mean it…

And for all that, here Aimé was, fucking aching with guilt at having left Jean-Pierre behind, feeling bad about it, and even feeling bad aside, he wanted to go home anyway – and that was telling, wasn’t it? That he wanted to go home?

Home was Jean, whether he liked it or not, even though they’d barely known each other for more than four months: home was Jean-Pierre’s frankincense scent and Colm making him work out in the yard, it was the long couch and the fireplace, and getting woken up by the O’Malleys’ huge, ginger cat when he came visiting.

“Is there anyone sitting here?” asked a voice, in English, and Aimé stared up, his jaw completely dropped, as Asmodeus didn’t wait for an answer: he slid himself into the seat across from Aimé, unbuttoning the front of his cardigan and leaning back in the seat, and Aimé stared at him, uncomprehending, looking between De and the door.

“How the fuck did he call you?” Aimé asked. “You don’t have a phone.”

“A trait we have in common these days, or so I’m informed,” Asmodeus said mildly, and waved the waitress over. As Asmodeus offered a platter of cheese and meat for them, and a bottle for them to share, Aimé said absolutely nothing, assuring himself that Asmodeus was real, that the waitress could see him, was talking to him.

“You here to tell me to go back?” Aimé asked, and Asmodeus frowned at him.

“What ever gave you that idea?” Asmodeus asked, and he interlinked his fingers, leaning his chin on the top of his two hands and looking at Aimé directly. Aimé remembered when he’d first met Asmodeus, looking at him had been like looking at the sun – he’d never been able to do it directly. Then, it had just been uncomfortable. Now…

Now, he looked De in the face, and he felt a kind of sensitivity in his eyes, felt that he should look away, but didn’t, and it made him feel good.

“My brother is like a cat, Aimé,” Asmodeus said in his slow, deliberate voice, so deep, so smooth, a voice he’d never forget in his life. “I love him very dearly, but he comes and goes as he pleases, he fucks all the neighbourhood toms, and he kills every creature he finds smaller and weaker than he. He is a devastation. I love him, but it’s true.”

Aimé swallowed.

“I’m not here to tell you to go back to him, especially if you don’t want to,” Asmodeus murmured. “I’m here because I thought you might like an educated party with whom to talk out your troubles.”

Aimé tapped his fingers against the cheap table between them. “Has he killed other boyfriends?”

“Other than Rupert? No, never. Manolis was shot, Benoit had a stroke, Bui died of tuberculosis, Farhad, as you know, died after complications from his HIV – pneumonia, I think. Jules died in his sleep, of a heart attack, or something like that.” Asmodeus spoke very casually, simply, with an easy gesture of one hand as he spoke. “But if Jean has proven too much for you, Aimé, I think you should leave him.”

“I don’t want to,” Aimé whispered. “Not permanently. I l… I want him. I’ve never wanted anybody like I want him.”

“Will you still want him,” Asmodeus asked, “if he kills you?”

“I don’t know,” Aimé said. “Maybe. Do you think he will?”

Asmodeus studied him a moment, seemingly fascinated, and then asked, “You’re frightened he’ll kill you?”

“Shouldn’t I be?”

“I don’t think he’d kill you,” Asmodeus murmured. “Even provoked, even if you asked him to, I don’t think he would.”

“Did you think he’d kill Rupert?”

“Oh, yes,” Asmodeus said. “I was honestly surprised it took him so long.”

“Oh,” Aimé said.

Asmodeus inhaled and then exhaled, slowly, thoughtfully. “I blame myself, in part, for the damage done to Jean by Myrddin. I told you before, Aimé, as much as I would very much like to be, I’m not omniscient. As soon as I realised Jean-Pierre had stopped showing up to his work at the time, I started my search for him. I combed the world over. I even spoke with Myrddin – he had ensured almost none of his staff were aware, that none of them could tell me.

“I very nearly killed him. I wanted to. But what you must understand, Aimé, is that my actions are not my actions alone: everything I do can affect the Embassy, affect angels as a whole.”

Asmodeus leaned back, murmuring thanks as the waitress set a platter of cheeses, crackers, and cured meats in front of them, and set two glasses beside each of them, also placing the bottle ready for them. As Asmodeus drew the cork from the top of the bottle, he went on, “Jean was… difficult, after that. Brittle. He refused to speak to Colm for nearly a decade, because in his mind, Colm had abandoned him, and didn’t care that he might be imprisoned. He couldn’t be left alone in a building, in a room, even – he was terrified of locks, couldn’t stand a closed door. When he met Rupert, he was working as a lawyer – that business of using his royal blood, that was brought up within a year. It surprised me that Jean-Pierre didn’t snap until after he was crowned, but I think that was the final trigger, so to speak.”

“Why didn’t Colm look for him?” Aimé asked in a low voice.

“He was busy,” Asmodeus said. “There was a war on. And Colm had infiltrated a Nazi family in 1940, killed them in ’41 – and they had a little girl, Heidemarie, who was four. So Colm adopted her. Raised her as his own.”

Aimé was silent for a long second. He tried to take in a few of those data points, one after the next: Nazi family, killed them, adopted their daughter, didn’t break Jean out of prison.

“Fuck,” said Aimé.

“Yes,” Asmodeus said. “She was a wonderful little girl. Bubbly, energetic – extraordinarily skilled with darts and throwing knives. She used to threaten to run away and join the circus, and Colm always said he had to take this very seriously, because any circus would eagerly snap her up.” Asmodeus smiled slightly, spreading some soft cheese on a cracker, and then said, “But Jean took it very personally, you understand, that Colm chose to look after a human little girl instead of looking for him. Heidemarie is eighty-something now, and Jean-Pierre has never said a word to her. He holds his grudges, Aimé.”

“You think I should break up with him?”

“I think you should do what you want to do.”

“Colm thought I should break up with him.”

“I’m sure he does think that,” Asmodeus said. “Colm loves Jean very dearly, but he is more aware than anybody of his flaws. More forgiving of them, too, I think.”

“More forgiving than you?” Aimé asked.

“Perhaps not,” said De.

“Why are you here?” Aimé asked.

“Well,” Asmodeus said, hesitating a moment, and then said, “There’s a wine-tasting tomorrow, starts at eleven. I thought you might like to go.”

Aimé blinked. “A wine… A wine-tasting?”

“Yes.”

“What the fuck does that have to do with Jean?”

“Well, nothing,” Asmodeus said. “He doesn’t drink wine – even if he did, he wouldn’t be invited. I’m asking you.”

“Me?”

“Yes.”

“You’re inviting me to a wine-tasting?”

“Yes.”

“So you think I should break up with your brother?”

“I think that’s your decision.”

Aimé pressed his hand against his mouth for a moment, trying to take that in, and he looked at Asmodeus’ simple, casual smile, at his cold eyes, trying his best to make sense of him.

“Do you—” Aimé started, and then closed his mouth.

“Do I…?”

“Do you want to fuck me?” Aimé asked. 

Asmodeus blinked. He looked surprised, genuinely, really surprised, and he considered the question very seriously as though Aimé had asked him some kind of maths question, something difficult. “Well,” he said, “No. I had the wine-tasting in mind. Were you hoping I would?”

“I wouldn’t complain,” Aimé said slowly. “But I don’t think Jean would like it.”

“Good, glad that’s sorted out,” Asmodeus said. “You’ll come to the tasting, then?”

“Yeah,” Aimé said. “Yeah, okay. I just… Isn’t that weird? If I leave Jean for real, actually leave him, you’d, what, still hang out with me?”

“Why wouldn’t I? No one else I know appreciates wine the way you do.”

“Well, because I’d be your crazy brother’s weird ex.”

“I try not to let Jean have veto power over my social calendar,” said Asmodeus, giving a light shrug of his shoulders. “And nor does Colm, for that matter. You understand that, don’t you? That Colm and I wouldn’t cut all ties simply because Jean did?”

“He’s going to kill me,” Aimé said.

“No,” Asmodeus said.

“For leaving him.”

“Oh,” Asmodeus said, and thought about it very seriously. “He might try,” he decided, with a small nod of his head. “Best to let him calm down.”

“I’m not saying I’m gonna go back,” Aimé said. “He’s— He’s so beautiful, De, he’s gorgeous, he’s perfect, but he’s like… He’s like a fucking black hole. I think maybe he’s safest from a distance.”

“I expect you’re right,” Asmodeus said, and looked at Aimé amusedly, his lips quirked into a small smirk. “And now you’ve been so close, Aimé, do you think you can keep your distance?”

Aimé swallowed. “I don’t know,” he said, honestly. “I used to want to die, and I don’t want to anymore, and I don’t want to go back to Jean just to fucking kill myself with him.”

“Sounds like quite the conundrum,” Asmodeus said.

“You’re not helping.”

“I know, I’m not trying to.”

Aimé laughed. It was a funny laugh, a strange relief, one that ached as it wrenched its way out of his chest, and he leaned back in his seat, trying to gather all the shattered parts of himself into a person again.

“Why not try the wine?” Asmodeus suggested. “It’s a very pleasant Malbec.”

“Would you go back to him?” Aimé asked. “If you were me?”

“I don’t know,” Asmodeus said. “But I am me, Aimé. And I go back to him as often as I can.”

Aimé picked up his wineglass, and Asmodeus smiled at him approvingly.

Their glasses clinked in a silent toast.